my brother's blood in my dirty lungs
by black-ostias
Summary: rick/daryl, past rick/shane, in which all the things that have ever happened, whatever bad you've done – it doesn't matter. direct continuation of this fic: archiveofourown .org/works/1713482


They became best friends at lunchtime, when the new kid ate his sandwich beneath the giant elm instead of on the schoolyard benches. Curiosity overcame the communal mistrust of anyone who wasn't originally from King County, and Shane saw that Newbie had army men with him, moving the little plastic figures around. He looked up once Shane got close enough, and grinned nervously. The expression looked kind of unnatural on his somber face, perhaps because Shane hadn't ever seen him smile before.

"Wanna play?"

Shane didn't see why not, because it didn't make sense why everybody stayed away from Newbie – _Rick_, he reminded himself absently, _his name was Rick_ – in the first place. So he sat cross-legged next to him, dissected the formations of soldiers green as the shorn grass they marched across. "Don't make 'em attack from the north, there's no cover if they need to retreat," he told the other boy after a brief spate of silence, because Shane could never keep his mouth shut for long.

Rick's smile this time was wider, unrepentant as the spilled-ink shine of his eyes. "They won't need to retreat, if they attack from the north."

His voice was a pretty sort of quiet, and Shane tried to glare though the corners of his mouth were ticking up of their own accord. "Yeah, I knew that," he muttered, and Rick only laughed.

There were two leftover Oreos in Rick's lunch bag, which he handed over to Shane almost absentmindedly, unheard of generosity in a seven year old. Shane was befuddled by this, but chose to burst out a grin back at Rick in the end. "You wanna come over to my house later?"

Rick nodded, beaming. "Yeah! Yeah, you can come to mine too. I have a Nintendo," he bragged.

Shane's eyes widened engagingly. "Wow, cool." The bell sliced through the din of kids' chatter, and Shane helped Rick scoop the army men back into the lunch bag. The boughs of the elm stretching out into the clear blue air, sunlight catching in Rick's cherub curls, and Shane was too young to realize that this was a perfect day.

* * *

The newcomer keeps looking at Daryl like he's seen a ghost, and he's too simmering mad to care. Now that he's seen him don his police uniform like it's a normal work day, Daryl wants nothing to do with this Rick Grimes, other than make sure the asshole helps him get his brother back. His even bigger asshole of a partner looks Daryl straight in the eye and sneers his brother's name like a curse, says, "Guy wouldn't give you a glass of water if you were dying of thirst."

Daryl watches on, bemused, as Grimes rambles on about how honorable he is, not wanting to leave a man to die. His wife and the man she'd been sleeping with both ride his ass about going, straight out of a soap opera, and Daryl's not going to touch that mess with a ten foot pole, thank you.

Grimes slips his way out of it with dressed-up words, gets two more people involved in their little rescue mission, but there's the promise of more firepower, and Merle returned alive, so he doesn't care.

He can't help overhearing the conversation Walsh and Grimes have, right before they leave. They're standing right by the truck after all, Walsh fretting and fussing like the old lady Grimes describes him as, the whole thing a well-worn routine. "Thank you," Grimes says afterwards, sobering up. "Not just for the rounds, but. You saved my family. I owe you more than I'll ever be able to repay."

Walsh shrugs, rubbing at the back of his head. "You don't need to thank me for that, man," he sighs, and Grimes hugs him with one arm closed around his waist, a surprised oof escaping Walsh before he retaliates, prodding his fist into the space above the other man's belt. Something old and odd sparks at the back of Daryl's brain from the sight, and he frowns, grumbles "_finally_" none too quietly once the pleasantries and goodbyes are over, and then they're moving and he's not thinking about it anymore.

* * *

Catch in the park, powering to snag line drives and his dad called out, "Use both hands, buddy, you keep forgetting." Shane clapped his right hand to his glove at the last second, squeezing the ball into security through the leather. He was about to wing it back when he caught sight of Rick walking towards them, kicking something along his path with his shoulders rounded, his head hung low.

He waved vaguely at his dad to excuse himself, jogged towards his friend with a ready grin. "So how was it living in the ass-end of Georgia?"

Rick shrugged, bleak as a lightning cloud, though that was to be understood. "Was great. Better than great." He gave the smirk, that particular smirk which always appeared when Rick had something to lord over Shane. "Almost drowned."

Shane's eyes bugged out, and he smacked Rick on the shoulder. "How'd that happen? An' who rescued you?"

"Long story, and I didn't need rescuing," Rick huffed. His smile was fonder now, more forlorn. "A boy I became friends with, he helped, though. He's really good at pitching, Shane, his changeup is awesome, so hard to hit."

"But of course you hit it," Shane pressed on, noogieing Rick with a laugh when his friend nodded in assent. "Call him and tell him we'll see him around at Little League, then."

Rick shook his head, dreary again. "He doesn't have a phone. Their house burned down and his mom died."

For the first time in his short life, Shane had nothing to say, and Rick scooped the stone he'd been keeping underfoot to the side with his sneaker, said in a poor attempt to deflect, "Let's just play instead. Did you bring a bat?"

"Aww, the lil catcher wants to be the next Dale Murphy," Shane cackled immediately, and Rick shoved him hard, raced him back to where Shane's dad was shaking his head at them. He coached Rick into adjusting the torque of his body, corrected Shane's footwork, and schooled them both about the '48 Boston Braves pennant-winning rotation, until all three of them were doing the tomahawk chop and hooting at each other, "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain!," until the dark was chased away from Rick's face and it was time to go home.

* * *

The more Daryl looks at Rick, the more he's convinced he's going insane. _i know you_, a small voice inside him insists, as they continue moving across the woods, through the door of the church, perfectly in sync after mere days of acquaintance. _i knew you. you were something to me, a long time ago_.

Daryl's mind is a safehouse with deep winding staircases and hallways as long as light-years, rooms beyond counting, and in all that space there is only one shut door. That door is locked now, and boarded up, and barricaded with all the available furniture. Daryl had buried it in a lightless wing of his brain, and now he's come too close to that hidden room again, set his hand on the knob and felt its searing heat, the gnashing fire that awaits him beyond it, and for the fourth time in as many hours more he turns tail and runs.

"I'ma walk the road, look for the girl," he tells Andrea. Tired, he thinks. Confused. Syrupy ropes in his mind, like his thoughts are melting a little more every time Carol sobs to herself, every time Rick cuts fast glances at him like he doesn't want to get caught doing it, like there's something he wants to ask Daryl but doesn't know how.

"Will you be okay on your own?" Rick says instead, and Daryl is disgusted to find himself perking up at the concern, tamps on a scowl. "M'better on my own."

Rick calls after him and this should be the part where Daryl swats him off like a fly, keeps his head, but it doesn't go that way. He stands still enough for Rick to say, "You don't owe us anything," his eyes shadow-rimmed and imploring, just barely holding himself upright and Daryl wonders what it is that makes this man care; maybe Rick Grimes has a dusty locked room up in his neat little head too, just waiting to see the light of day.

* * *

Shane was ten years old and swathed in blankets, shivering though his back was drenched in fever sweat and chewing on a Chupa Chups. He could hardly taste it but the feel of it in his mouth was comforting. He was debating going back to sleep again or sneaking down to the living room to watch _Superman II_ while his parents were away when Rick rapped on his window.

"Aw man, you're sick!" he complained after he'd wriggled his way through, and Shane rolled his eyes despite the effort, because Shane's good health only mattered to Rick so Shane could protect his short, scrawny behind.

"Yeah," he sighed, his voice congested and miserable, though he still grinned around his candy, boasted, "Least I don' have school."

Rick groaned and kicked at the carpet, but then lit up with excitement. "Get me sick too! School's boring without you."

Shane chewed out the rest of his Chupa Chups with an agreeable nod, lifted the corner of his sheets in invitation. "Get in here, there's more germs." They drew the blankets over their heads, Shane coughing right on Rick's face to make him laugh. The flashlight Shane kept wedged at the head of his mattress was used to try and make shadow puppets, but neither of them were any good at it.

The cone of light bounced from the flicking motions of Rick's hand, skewing across their faces and Shane's eyes were fuzzy, the lids swollen heavy and dragging lower until he fell asleep, breathing wetly through his mouth, Rick's shoulder the best pillow he'd had in ages. And that was how Shane's mother found them when she came back from shopping, pulling back the covers and revealing her son and his best friend with their arms flung at twined angles, their foreheads tucked together and both of them as sick as dogs.

* * *

Motherfucker, and this is what Daryl says when he can't think of anything else to say. Motherfucker when he is too angry for words, when he is drunk or shocked awake by his dreams, when he knows that he shouldn't be feeling this exhausted from everything. But not a peep escapes him as long as he's injured; when people ask where the bruises are from, tell them you ran into a damn door, boy, or I twist out your tongue next time you piss me off.

So he lets Hershel cut off his ruined shirt, takes the stitches without complaint. Ignoring the sick throb in his left temple, he settles for glaring at everyone in his sights, daring them to ask about the mass of gnarled tissue he calls his back. Rick just looks strangely agonized for all of a second, recovering efficiently and asking the things he needs to know about Sophia's doll.

Rick was worried about him, Daryl realizes, after he and Shane have left the room, the thought like a bolt of electricity striking down out of clear blue skies. He'd screamed so hard when Daryl got shot down, running panicked hands across Daryl's skin as if he could heal all hurts from that alone. And that odd twinge of guilt that had no place in his eyes – no, Daryl is too wrung-out to put much energy into it.

He can hear Shane's arrogant scorn from behind the door, Rick's hissing replies, and Hershel tapes cotton padding over his wound. "I know it's not my place," he says, in the tone of one who's going to _make_ it their place, "but all the things that have happened, anything that's ever happened to you, it doesn't matter. Not to Rick or your group, it doesn't. They're good folks."

Daryl covers his face with his forearm, a long-lost feeling taking root in his stomach, and he's much too wary of being suckered by anything resembling optimism, but he knows even that is changing, slowly and surely as a spring blossom.

* * *

Rick had always been Rick to Shane, and to the other kids at school; it was a solid, bold sounding name that muscled the skinny little punk behind it. 'Ricky' was only used by family members whose job was to embarrass him, and since Shane was Rick's brother in all but name, he got to use it too, though he hadn't called him that in years now.

He said it now, ill-fitting Sunday's best and sweating under his tie though it looked like rain. "Ricky?" he whispered, reaching his hand out but not touching, not yet. Rick was hunched beside his mother as Shane's parents hugged her and jostled her wide-shouldered black taffeta, morphing it into a raven fluttering its wings in challenge. His eyes, to Shane's unease, were blazing, even after Mr. Grimes was laid to rest.

"It was a drunk driver that did it," Rick told him, dress shoes clutched in both their hands as they walked sock-footed over the damp grass, over resting places of people long dead, because it wasn't their ghosts Shane had to worry about. Rick hadn't cried all throughout the funeral, but tears were starting to flow now. "Plowed him off the side of the road and don't you dare make fun of me when I say I wanna be a cop, Shane, don't you _dare_ –"

"I won't," Shane cut him off, arms hauling Rick close in a fierce embrace, not flinching when Rick tried to pull free and twist away. "I'll even join you," he found himself saying, floundering for anything to make his friend stay. "I'll be your dumb partner, I'll never leave you, you asshole, now just _stay_."

Rick broke, fell to his knees laughing and crying all at once, and Shane kept holding him together. All of thirteen years old and neither of them knew that there were some promises that just couldn't be kept.

* * *

The walker in overalls is feisty, snarling and snapping at Rick and Daryl keeps the shotgun trained on it, trying in vain to block out Shane's roaring tirade, Rick's futile cries.

"Don't do this, brother, Shane, please," and you'd think that would get him to calm down but Shane hammers at the lock on the barn even harder, the word _brother_ sharp-tasting, acidic. And then the doors burst open, and Daryl steps up to dispatch the dead. It's like the Fourth of July for all of a minute, explosions of blood and bone and decayed brain matter, until Carol's little girl reveals herself, a hunk of flesh missing from her frail neck and this time Shane doesn't know what to do. None of them know what to do. Daryl can only hold the grieving mother back as Rick carries out the hardest part of all, continues to do it as the rest of them resent him for it.

"I killed my best friend for you, for Christ's sake," he snarls a week later, animal eyes and savaged by grief, and the bruises on Daryl's hands throb once, twice in sympathy. Carl's still crying when Rick stalks off, and Daryl can't bear the sound either, follows him into the protective dark of the woods.

He finds Rick leaned against a log, head in his hands and his shoulders trembling with barely restrained sobs. More torn apart over this than anyone will ever know, and Daryl knows better than to intrude, deny him his mourning in privacy.

_you can talk about it with me anytime you want_.

The thought hits Daryl like a high-nineties fastball to the throat, and he nearly trips over his feet, a rush of technicolor behind his eyelids blinding him to everything else. Rick Grimes at eight years old, holding a pink-lined umbrella over Daryl's head, the cartoonish ideality of childhood painting him brighter than any heavenly body could ever hope to be.

Ten paces over, his only friend stirs, having heard the snap of twigs Daryl's uncharacteristic clumsiness made, and Daryl does the only thing he can still remember how: run and hide.

_Coward_, Merle's phantom hisses at him, and for once Daryl doesn't object.

* * *

Arizona in summer was a killer, the air drying up in his lungs so Shane couldn't breathe, not helped by the still-healing break in his nose. He'd tell anyone who'd listen that it got broken during a bar brawl (it was hilariously lame to say that he'd slipped diving into a swimming pool), but no one took him seriously thanks to his high pitched nasal whine through the plaster, his acne-studded face.

So it was a terrible holiday, despite the breathtaking view, the ancient colors of orange and red washing across the valley come morning and the huge twinkling vastness of the sky at night. Shane could stay up past eleven with his cousins, sitting on the bumper of a car that didn't belong to them and waiting for the meteor shower to begin, and he would still ache for tropical rain, for riding his bike down grassy terrains with Rick on his tail, laughing as he tried to catch up.

They left the airport by bus, and Shane stumbled down the steps, yawning and off-balance with both hands hauling his duffel and Rick was waiting on the curb, grinning so big he almost looked deranged.

"Hey, Shane. Hi, Mr. an' Mrs. Walsh," he exclaimed, thunder like a baseline through his once reedy voice and Shane just barely refrained from saying _holy shit_ out loud. His mother expressed the sentiment for him.

"Oh my, is that really you, Rick? You've sprouted like a weed," she laughed, and Rick now had to duck his head so she could ruffle his hair, same as when she did it to Shane. Shane's dad clapped Rick on his broad shoulders, went to retrieve their car from the parking lot and Shane was stuck staring at how Rick's arms were tanned dark enough that his white T-shirt practically glowed.

"So you really did break your nose," Rick snickered, when they were riding in the backseat, and Shane had forgotten that he'd told Rick about that in a postcard. Rick reached out, traced the scar bisecting the bridge of Shane's nose with gentle fingertips. "Didn't heal right, but it's okay. You look kinda tough now."

Shane's cheeks flushed and his chest went tight like he was back in Phoenix again and it felt like panic – he didn't know why he would be panicked right now. It was just Rick touching his face, Rick smiling at him all sweet and sure, nothing that hadn't happened a thousand times before.

The only thing that had changed was Shane.

* * *

Of all the things they begin to talk about when they're not talking about supplies, or shelter, or the huge horde of geeks blocking their escape from the town square, it's baseball. Of course it's baseball.

Rick was a catcher in high school, and Daryl has a quick playback of Rick dropped in the crouch, catching two-seamer two-seamer slider as though they did it every day, then flailing when he was at the plate, like it was a lot harder working against Daryl than with him. The closest Daryl ever got to an official game was TV whenever his father was blackout hungover, and Merle idly arranging the grip of his fingers over the worn ball that was just gathering dust in the room. _let's see if you can really pitch, kiddo_, Daryl was challenged one day, and after a few tries his curve only had the suggestion of a break at the tail of it, quiet as a wish, nothing spectacular, but his changeup. Daryl can count on one hand the times he got Merle to shut up, and the most memorable of them is his magic change and its first appearance out of his glove and into his brother's.

And so they bridge the silence by talking about America's team, talking about Tim Hudson's splitter, trash-talking the Mets with glee, "who thought Cox's retirement would bring about the end of the world, huh?"

"We should find some baseball gear," Rick says, one quiet morning as they clear out what's left in a grocery store. "See if you still know your off-speeds."

Daryl jerks his head up, his every sense lighting. Rick has half turned away from him, eyes riveted to the hardware appliances in front of him like his life depends on it, his mouth gone sealed and small. Daryl can't fault him for that.

"I thought you forgot," he says after a brittle moment, gone hoarse like he hasn't spoken in years.

Rick makes a bad smile that doesn't last. "I thought you didn't want to remember." Once again Daryl has forgotten what the last thing Rick did to him before he left was, a fastly-growing familiar raw drag in his stomach, because Rick was the first person who kissed him because they wanted to, and he's corrupted that gift thousands of different ways, a devil image of Rick against his hometown park's chain link fence, curls pushed out of shape and his lips parting desperately under Daryl's.

No. That would be asking too much, far more than what Daryl will ever deserve.

Daryl smirks, though it feels more like a sneer, and says, "Glad to see you've straightened out, at any rate." It's the wrong thing to say and, just as expected, Rick flinches from the sting.

* * *

They celebrated their first win with a varsity team the way any freshman player would spend it: by getting spectacularly drunk.

This wasn't the first time either of them had tasted liquor before, but this was a high school party, upperclassmen smacking their shoulders in recognition and glitter-eyed girls winking at them from every corner, plastic cups magically appearing in their hands, Gatorade mixed with stuff they hadn't even heard of but drank up anyway.

Rick ended up squashed between two senior girls who looked about ready to peel his clothes off, but he just kept talking in parable and screwed-up rhyme, smiling guilelessly and puppy-eyed. Even when he was smashed beyond comprehension, Rick had no idea just how mercurial his effect on people could be.

Shane ended up loading Rick into the backseat of his dad's car, relegated to the responsible older brother role even if he was six full days younger than Rick, something that happened too often for his liking. But he didn't mind so much at that moment; Rick was all loose limbs and hitching laughter, warm sweet kid and Shane's bestest friend in the wide world.

And then Shane's hand tripped over the board of Rick's stomach, and Rick gasped and hiccupped and. Moaned, a little bit.

Shane was stunned for a moment, a year's worth of daydreams gone through the shredder by Rick arching under his touch, and he couldn't stop himself. He was almost as drunk as Rick was, terrified enough to not look Rick in the eye as he said, "here, ricky, let me just—" and unbuckled Rick's jeans, bit the hard wedge of Rick's hip. Rick's palms formed to the base of Shane's skull, small confused sounds from above every so often, like Rick was wondering why Shane didn't have girl's hair.

Shane couldn't remember how they got themselves home.

The next day, Rick asked who it was Shane ordered to blow Rick, and if she wanted to do it again. Shane laughed through the swollen ache of his jaw, his ribcage, and told Rick what he wanted to hear.

* * *

They clean out the solitary block alone, which, in hindsight, should have told Daryl everything.

The emptiness is far more deafening compared to the firefight that happened the day before, spooky and still as they drag the walker corpses down the halls. A dozen bodies to go and Rick doesn't say a world, so neither does Daryl, a tense expectant silence building perilously high between them.

"Are you and Michonne really leaving?"

Daryl goes still though he hasn't been moving, propped against the door to one of the cells and now given an excuse to stare at Rick, and how his heartbeat is clattering through the vein in the side of his neck. "I just. She told me you planned to go after the Governor," he offers lamely, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

Daryl nods. "He's gonna come back. You know that." They can't take the chance of just waiting for the monster to regrow its limbs, but they don't have the manpower to spare for a full-scale hunt either. Michonne and he will make do.

"Not for a long time, though," Rick insists, hope creeping in at the edges, something Daryl hasn't heard from the other man since Lori. "You could use a rest, the both of you."

"We don't do well caged up." Michonne is a kindred spirit in her restlessness, vendetta cinching her bones until she's pacified by the Governor's body impaled on her blade, and Daryl understands that too well. He tries to temper the words with a well-natured smile, but Rick tips his chin up, a castaway desperately scanning the horizon for land, parched and fretful about the eyes and. _Oh_.

Rick comes near enough to rest his hand on Daryl's sternum and Daryl is too stunned to react, the shock hitting him deep enough to be absorbed completely into his body before reaching the surface, frozen in place as Rick says, gaze never leaving Daryl's, "As long as you come back."

And Daryl is eight years old again, touching his mouth and watching Rick fly back to his parents' car and wishing quietly, _no wait come back_. He swallows past the blockade in his throat, very carefully circles his fingers around Rick's wrist.

"I thought I couldn't do anything," and Daryl has to collect himself for a moment, something important in him crumbling at the foundations. "It was too late already."

Rick drops his eyes to where their hands are joined, a high strained sound like a laugh. "That's never been the problem. Lori, and Shane, they're part of me. I'll always love and miss them, but." He bites his lower lip, Daryl utterly derailed by the action, even more so by the words that follow. "You were always there. You never left. Until you did, and then I. I thought I'd lost you for good, this time. I thought I'd wasted my second chance."

Daryl trails the fine curve of Rick's cheek with his thumb, and he hopes his face reads something of the mess inside, some fraction of the light exploding. He can't speak because he's going find some way to wreck this, he just knows it, and Rick looks up with a helpless smile, angling his face up like a sacrifice, something he's willing to give.

"I think you have to prove me wrong," Rick murmurs, and Daryl kisses him with nothing less than a lifetime of wanting, moaning when Rick kisses back. Rick is laughing against Daryl's mouth, his hands cupping Daryl's face and Daryl wants to tug at the curls on the base of Rick's neck, if only to hear that siren sound forever.

They fall right back into each other. This is how it's always been, how it'll always be.

* * *

Lori came with Rick to Shane's birthday celebration, and Shane was fully prepared to loathe her on sight, which he almost did, but then she slanted him a rolled-eyes smile as Rick patted down the creases in his coat before hanging it on a rack, exasperated and affectionate, practically like looking in a mirror.

Shane ditched hooking up with Victoria from his History class last semester in favor of exchanging Rick stories with Lori, that time Rick tried to roll his bike down the hill with no hands and ended up in the pond, that time Rick sang a little love song on my parents' answering machine because he thought it was my private line, and Rick scowled at them, nervous and betrayed, but laughed whenever they did.

Shane could see what Rick saw in her. She was pretty and bird-boned and nothing like a guy, and she gifted Shane with a necklace, a silver-shining '22' pendant hanging off the chain. Shane slipped it on at once, grinning wide when she went to kiss him on the cheek as well.

"How'd you know about this?"

"Rick told me. It's your high school team number, right? He never shuts up about you, it's adorable," she said, giggling at Rick's embarrassed groan and how he burrowed his head into her side, under her arm, the perfect crazy-in-love couple. Shane could picture little blue-eyed kids, girls with hair like curling wisps of cloud, boys born with the ability to guard the line against doubles.

Lori excused herself to go to the bathroom, and Rick kept glancing anxiously at him, grip white-knuckled around his beer bottle, until Shane said evenly, "She's a good kid."

Rick sagged back against the wall the slightest bit. "Yeah?"

Shane nodded, absently twisting his fingers in his necklace, the weight of it still unfamiliar, would take some getting used to, and Rick chuckled, relieved. "Good. Good. I wanna, I'm gonna marry her, Shane."

Shane's head suddenly emptied, and he put his hand on the wall to steady himself, shock cold and itchy on his skin like dry ice. "Seriously?" he managed. "For real?"

But he knew that was a useless question, playing for time. Rick wouldn't lie about something like this. Shane knew that, but he could still have that two-second interval in which he could foolishly believe that it was just Rick's bizarre brand of drunk humor, joking around, it wasn't real.

Two seconds.

"For real," Rick said, his eyes huge and terrified and elated beyond belief. "I already have my grandma's ring. I'll just have to ask her parents first, then her."

_we haven't even graduated college yet_, Shane wanted to cry out. _you've only known each other for six months. you're supposed to b e_.

But they were best friends. This Shane had to forcefully remind himself of, before and after everything else, they were just best friends, and he was amazed to find himself saying, "As long as your bridesmaid is hot as fuck, I better be the best man."

Rick hyena-laughed, wrapped his arm around Shane's waist and buried his face in Shane's shoulder. "Of course, man, who else would it be."

Shane let his eyes fall shut, his hand itching at Rick's collar. It was too much, this would break him, but maybe he'd get used to this too. Maybe someday this would be enough, as long as Rick would stay happy for the rest of his life.

* * *

Judith's tiny fingers curl around his chin, Carl snoring two cells down and Daryl curled up in their bunk, and Rick decides that he doesn't care about anymore, he already has everything he needs.

This isn't at all true, of course, and Rick is aware of that. But he relishes the sound of it. It seems like the proper way to be.

He rocks his daughter back and forth some more, and her happy burbles become sleepier and sleepier until she's nodded off, deceptively angelic in slumber. He sets Judith down in the crib Daryl spent a whole week fashioning outside in the common area, his shirts soaked through and his straggly hair heavy with sweat, rolling his eyes at Glenn's outlandish wolf-whistles and smirking at Rick.

At present, the man is naked to the waist with a hickey rising on his collarbone, his face smoothed over and there's an ocean in Rick's lungs, drowning him again, but in the best possible way.

Daryl was a pipe dream for the longest time, the way Shane was to Rick when he was fifteen and completely gone on his unattainable best friend, not worth wasting shooting stars or eyelash wishes over. Whole years passed with Rick's heart remaining long-suffering and steadfast, and then Lori smiled at him from across a room and it was like he was never in love with anyone else.

Rick sits by Daryl's feet, careful of disturbing him, and watches the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, his hands loose at his sides. He doesn't know what time it is, doesn't bother looking at his watch.

Streaks of luck are one of the many things Rick has outgrown, because he can't control them, or trust them. He's always waiting for the other shoe to drop, seriously doubtful that his life is going to fall back into place so easily.

But then Rick thinks about how it was the first time he saw Daryl, materializing out of the woods like a reverie given breath, he thinks about how it is now, the way Daryl kisses him so gently, as though he's scared of hurting him, then building it up to something hard and bruising and deliciously rough until he's shaking with need, the way Daryl touches him like he's relearning how to do it each time, the way Daryl cradles Judith close and finds little everyday treasures for Carl, the way Daryl starts smiling whenever Rick cracks a little joke and even when he says nothing at all –

It's possible Rick's still eight years on the inside from the wonder of it, fifteen years old from the cataclysmic depth of his love, and all grown up from how he prepares less and less for the worst now, his faith in what they have augmented steadily with each sunrise.

"Alright?"

Rick looks down to the black screens of Daryl's eyes, and, because he can, answers by leaning over to press his lips to the pulse in Daryl's throat, then the soft flesh on the underside of his jaw, then his bristly cheek.

Daryl rolls his body into a wave, holds Rick down on their bed with one hand cuffing Rick's wrists together, the other stroking Rick's lower lip. "jesus, rick," he says lowly, breathless with delight. "what you do to me."

Rick grins, licks over the line of Daryl's throat and doesn't reply.

* * *

**title taken from kevin devine's "brother's blood", played on a glorious loop as i wrote through this thing. as you can see from the lyrics:**

_it's my brother's blood in my dirty lungs  
on my crooked mouth, on my swollen tongue  
on my father's gun, on each stranger's face across the bluebird sky  
on every hand i shake night after night  
with each chuckled prayer, such sweet relief  
a fistful of hair and each desperate try for elusive peace  
and every endless night and each wasted week  
all that dialogue doubling back on me  
all that tangled talk, all that growling need  
it's my brother's back, it's my father's arms  
each twisted fact in my sorry heart  
my sorry heart, my sorry heart  
i spit and scream, "what's done is done  
go make your peace with everyone"  
they don't need to know about my brother's blood._

** it's the perfect chew-out-your-heart vibe.**


End file.
